Winston Churchill? Simon Singh? Stanley Baldwin? The Reader’s Digest? Apocryphal?
Dear Quote Investigator: Simon Singh is a fine author who writes knowledgeably about mathematical and scientific topics. His book “Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe” credited the following words to the statesman Winston Churchill [WCSS]:
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
This quotation was used by Singh during a discussion about serendipity and the development of antibiotics. When Alexander Fleming examined some bacterial cultures that had been contaminated with mold he saw an avenue toward the epoch-making discovery of penicillin Other scientists probably threw away similar contaminated cultures in exasperation.
I think it is a marvelous saying, but I have not yet located a solid citation. Could you determine if Churchill made this remark?
Quote Investigator: The earliest published evidence located by QI for a similar quote appeared in Reader’s Digest magazine in 1942, and the words were ascribed to Winston Churchill. Interestingly, the saying was about an individual unnamed man and not about men in general or people in general [WCR1]:
Occasionally he stumbled over the truth but he always picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened. (Winston Churchill)
An important reference work “Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill’s Wit” was published by Kay Halle in 1966. Halle knew the leader well, and she interviewed him and many of his friends while creating the compendium. Halle stated that the quote was aimed at Churchill’s political adversary Stanley Baldwin who was Prime Minister between 1935 and 1937. The wording given in the reference differed slightly from the version in the Reader’s Digest [WCKH]:
Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
Halle used the label “Ear-witness” for the quote to indicate that she heard it though mutual friends and not directly from Churchill. Also, she estimated that it was said around 1936.
In 1945 the syndicated newspaper columnist Charles G. Sampas printed a modern variant of the saying that referred to men in general instead of a specific man [WCCS]:
Men occasionally stumble over truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. (Churchill)
Here are additional selected citations and details in chronological order.
In 1942 the expression beginning “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth” was printed in Reader’s Digest. In 1945 a variant beginning “Men occasionally stumble over truth” was printed in a newspaper column. The details were given previously.
In May 1947 the statement reappeared in Reader’s Digest, but this second time the quote was about “men” [WCR2]:
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
—Winston Churchill
The second version in the Reader’s Digest was reprinted during the same month in the New York Post with an acknowledgement to the magazine [WCNY]. The industrious quotation collector Evan Esar, included the saying with the same phrasing in “The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations” in 1949 [WCEE]. The phrase was further disseminated when a reviewer of Esar’s book in the New York Times highlighted and reprinted the words ascribed to Churchill [WCNT].
Also in 1949 a slight variant was printed in a Texas newspaper. The word “had” was deleted from the subphrase “had happened” [WCRT]:
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”—Winston Churchill
The early phrasing and context of the saying were not completely forgotten. In 1952 the publisher and quotation maven Bennett Cerf wrote an article about Churchill titled “Winnie the Pooh-Bah”. He mentioned the connection to the previous Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin [WCTP]:
His predecessor, Baldwin, he pointed out, “occasionally had stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.”
In 1966 Kay Halle’s reference work was published as noted previously. In 1979 “1,001 Logical Laws” by John Peers presented the following variant [WCLL]:
Winston Churchill’s Commentary on Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he just picks himself up and stumbles on.
In conclusion, there is substantive evidence that Churchill did make a remark of the type printed in the Reader’s Digest in 1942. He was probably referring critically to Stanley Baldwin who was a former Prime Minister. However, it is unclear whether he ever generalized his statement to use the noun “men”.
(Many thanks to Peter Household whose email inquiry inspired the construction of this question and the initiation of this exploration. Household’s blog has a post about serendipity that mentions this quotation here.)
[WCSS] 2004, “Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe” by Simon Singh, Page 409, Fourth Estate, An Imprint of HarperCollins, [First U.S. Edition], New York. (Verified on paper)
[WCR1] 1942 April, Reader’s Digest, Volume 40, Picturesque Speech and Patter, Page 92, The Reader’s Digest Association. (Verified on paper)
[WCKH] 1966, Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill’s Wit by Kay Halle, Section Year: 1936, Page 133, World Publishing Company, Cleveland and New York. (Verified on paper)
[WCCS] 1945 September 6, Lowell Sun, Sampascoopies by Charles G. Sampas, Page 4, Column 5, [NArch Page 41], Lowell, Massachusetts. (NewspaperArchive)
[WCR2] 1947 May, Reader’s Digest, Volume 50, [Freestanding quotation], Page 50, The Reader’s Digest Association. (Verified on paper)
[WCNY] 1947 May 10, New York Post [New York Evening Post], “They Said It Better …”, Page 6, Column 3, New York. (Old Fulton)
[WCEE] 1949, The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations by Evan Esar, Section: Churchill, Page 56, Doubleday, Garden City, New York. (Verified on paper in 1989 reprint: Dorset Press, New York.)
[WCNT] 1949 April 24, New York Times, “Wit Conquers All, Or Laughter Through the Ages” by Charles Poore, [Review of The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations edited by Evan Esar], Page BR6, New York. (ProQuest)
[WCRT] 1949 February 4, The Echo [Richardson Echo], Clifford Sez, Page 6, Column 2, Richardson, Texas. (GenealogyBank)
[WCTP] 1952 February 3, Times-Picayune, “The Cerf Board: Winnie the Pooh-Bah” by Bennett Cerf, Page 4, [GNB Page 127], New Orleans, Louisiana. (GenealogyBank)
[WCLL] 1979, 1,001 Logical Laws, Accurate Axioms, Profound Principles, Compiled by John Peers, Edited by Gordon Bennett, Page 146, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York.